If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I hope no one brings up the racist card. The bottom line is the team is a mess and looks ill prepared from the opening kickoff. Right or wrong, that falls on the entire coaching staff, including Tomlin. Our general lack of talent is also to blame, but that's another rant for another thread.

Oh, there is racism on both sides to be sure. He has been anointed as a great young coach, partly due to his skin color. And there are those, who still think a black man can't be a leader of men.

His vacuum has sucked out every last ounce of pride, heart, and respect this team ever had. Maybe there's a little Gruden in him Gruden sucked the life out of Tampa Bay which performed at a consistently high level under Dungy for many years. And just as Tampa fans, we should be thankful Tomlin helped get us another ring and to another SuperBowl. But it may just be time to move on. Im sure he did his thing as best he could and it feels like we gotta start over. And its possible Tomlin's not the best guy to build a team from scratch.

And like Gruden, I bet Tomlin would be pretty interesting to watch on tv as a commentator. Heck, he'd probably be more interesting than Gruden.

Oh, there is racism on both sides to be sure. He has been anointed as a great young coach, partly due to his skin color. And there are those, who still think a black man can't be a leader of men.

I don't really understand either side of the racism argument. I really view sports/entertainment as colorblind. In the case of the Steelers, winning SuperBowls is all that really matters. The real dilemma with Tomlin is he's won a SuperBowl and taken us to another. And that's the real reason people want to give him the benefit of the doubt. His success. If he could get it right before, surely he could do it again? And he's gotten us to the dance twice.

On the other hand, we have a team in more disarray than anything any of us have ever witnessed. And when we look at Tomlin thru these lenses, he made a lot of missteps. Bad drafts, bad coaches, bad game management, bad player development, bad staff, bad contracts, bad promises, etc.

So what is Tomlin? Is he the great SuperBowl winning coach? Or is he the bum we see out there today? We've seen him make promises that he hasn't delivered upon repeatedly. We've seen things that have need to be fixed that continue to be problems to this day. We're a third year into his fall from grace and the down slide of this team. And things are getting progressively worse. To me it's looking more like he's a great leader if all the pieces are in place. But to fix issues or build things up from the ground floor, that might not be in his wheel house.

Maybe the Rooney's saw it in him from day 1? And maybe that's why they forced his assistants on him. And it seems like it could be likely that with success, Tomlin has tried to insert himself more and take over. And maybe he just can't handle it? Who knows?

I don't think he's has enough success during his tenure to make him untouchable. He could very well be the crux of the whole problem. Then again maybe he needs to take a little step back and the Rooney's can help him get the right people around him and we can leverage what he does well.

I kinda think this is where we're at and maybe the reason the Rooney's may have forced Haley on him. But clearly that's not working out so well. So what's the next step? Help Tomlin with new parts? Or bring in someone that's more experienced and ready to handle the rebuild?

I've never seen the level of confusion, chaos and hopelessness I witnessed tonight. There were countess plays where they looked like Pee Wee players just learning the game, not sure where to be on the field. There are very few players on either side of the ball worth keeping around or who will be any more than average.

The worst, saddest part of today was knowing (really knowing) this team is going to take years to correct this mess. They are far, far away from being a playoff team.

For the life of me I cannot figure out how this team, with this low level of talent, has spent so much on the salary cap (2014 is a total mess). How could this amount of $$ be spent on the product we saw on the field today.

I feel as if I actually saw the death of pride out their today.

We have grossly overpaid some players with consideration to their actual performances (sparing names for now) and put ourselves into cap hell. Our only way back is through cap purgatory.
We also have some coaching deficits, in several areas, with the glaring issue of failures in player development.
I, too, thought of the deep wounds to the pride of our franchise.

Narcissistic injury is the term used for any threat to a narcissist's outsized ego or self-esteem.